Midweek Podcast - Jesus Not Religion

So you wanted to have a conversation about Jesus, not religion.

Jesus not religion.

Let's tell a story.

Okay.

There was a day, I don't know if you remember this day, but where his hands on the front of our building was not a sign that said his hands church.

We always had a different themed.

It's like a billboard almost.

Yeah.

It was basically, it was a billboard.

We actually used to have billboards too, but this we used the front of our building like a billboard.

And then I guess the city came and said, you can't do that.

Yeah, the sign guy is responsible for making our community look nice.

And honestly, that's that's nice because otherwise you get a bunch of crazy.

But it was one of those things that we did for years and no one ever said anything.

And then one day a sign guy came with a city ordinance.

He's like, what has been going on here?

That is not that does not go with the city ordinance.

We're like, oh, we we didn't know that.

Yeah.

And so he's like, yeah, it needs to be a So some of those were real with a period.

I was gonna ask you, what do you remember?

Which one of those do you remember?

Real.

Real with a period, okay.

And party on Sunday.

That was the original, I think, was Party on Sunday.

Happy hour?

Happy hour.

That one?

That may I don't know if that was on the building.

It was definitely a billboard.

That was on, yeah.

And we hit the billboard like right on five.

Right on five right on the big highway.

And that one made a lot of people mad.

And I I wasn't in charge back then.

So we can I can talk about it.

We're in a very there's a very large Southern Baptist church close to us.

And I have a lot of friends that go, there's great.

Yeah.

But in like the early 2000s, I don't know if Southern Baptist is still as big on no alcohol.

They're pretty they're still pretty much.

But that was like a major like no alcohol.

So for a church in the same down an exit to say happy hour, Sunday's 10 a.m., that's what it said.

And you know, it's giving perspective to like why are churches the way it is.

If all those people showed up expecting happy hour and they stuck around for two years.

And the whole point that that Steve had back in the day, the the original you know, pastor before we ousted that guy.

Uh it was a coup.

It was a cold coup d'etat.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was a hostile takeover.

He's he's out.

No, I mean, his point with it was and it is hit his hands, like we have a good time.

Uh we have fun.

We have fun, not like we're handing out drinks fun, but we have fun.

Correct.

So it was he was trying to say, hey, this is a but funny story with that is Megan's grandparents came here one time, and uh her her grandma not ready for right for that.

It was when we had the happy hour billboard.

And she came up to me, we gave her a tour of the building, and she said, No, this is really cool, and I it's obvious that God's doing things here.

I I don't know if I love some of your your marketing, is what she said, I think.

And I thought she was talking about the happy hour billboard.

So I started to explain it.

Yeah, I was like, well, and and Megan like grabs me and she's like, Nope.

Because she hadn't seen that.

Yeah, she was just talking about like I think the sign we had in the front back in the day that said you can wear your jeans, bring in your coffee.

Yeah, and she's like, mm-mm.

And if like that bothered her, the happy hour.

But then later, years later, they attended here for many years and loved it.

So, no, okay, so Real with the Period, I do remember that one.

And Party on Sunday.

Party on Sunday was the original happy hour.

I don't know if that was that, but the one that probably was the most it's probably where we actually said what we wanted to say with all of those in the in a more meaningful way was Jesus not religion.

Jesus not religion.

Which is a confusing statement for most people who aren't Christians.

Or even for our our Christians, because you imagine religion as being like, I am a Christian, that is my religion.

Yes.

In in like a bubble that you fill out on a on a form.

Yeah.

Um, but it was getting to kind of a shift, I think that was just happening in culture in general, but it was just a Jesus-centered focus on like this is about the relationship with the risen Jesus, not necessarily like uh blindly abiding to what uh church has instituted over the years.

I mean, I think for you know, Steve, I I'm gonna paraphrase Steve because this was kind of his thing when we first started.

So a lot of me was I was young, I was in my early 20s.

How old are you now?

29.

See, I was I was a babe.

I was 23.

So I was soaking this stuff in.

It was very new for me.

And I had been in a church in Kansas City, Missouri that was very um edgy, uh in some ways more so than than his hands um at the time.

But early 2000s churches had a certain like, we're bringing some heat, you know, like we're I don't know, we're not your grandmother.

Some of it was dumb.

And I can look back on that.

But but what Steve's point was, and actually I never thought about this way, he said, hey, there's only he had said, I think it was something like there's only two mentions of religion in the Bible that are positive.

You know, it's like to care for widows and orphans.

This is your true religion, James.

Uh yeah, I believe so.

Yeah.

Um either way, and and another point, but he said he said every other time when the Bible uses the word religious, it's not positive.

You know, like so when Jesus is saying, you religious leaders and is he's not using it.

I mean, you could say it's it's neither positive or negative, it's just descriptive.

It's more connected to the hypocrisy that he's identifying.

Yes.

And so like legalism, religion, that thing.

And so what I what I've kind of just been able to say as a as a go-to statement when I mentioned this on stage is by religion, what we don't mean is devout reverence to God.

We don't mean like that respect, honor, respect, and honor.

Bringing glory to him with the way your lifestyle is, yeah.

Yeah, and being passionate for God.

What we mean is what Jesus really meant when he talked about, I think, the it's the man-made rules and regulations that often become as much a part of church as the God stuff, unfortunately.

And in Jesus' day, this was, I mean, super evident.

So Jesus lived during the time that the scribes were writing and solidifying their traditions.

And so you'd had the the what we would call the Old Testament, but there was a 400-year gap between the last page of what we would call the Old Testament and Jesus.

But in that time in between, you had some other writings, um, you know, the Maccabees and stuff like that.

But you also had the scribes and the Pharisees beginning to put together a document of all of their traditions that were we would call those extra-biblical.

Right.

But to the Pharisees and scribes, they were one and the same.

I mean, it's like for so hand washing.

They had a very elaborate hand washing ritual that hand washing was a biblical principle, but they took it to a whole different level.

Cleanliness and commands about cleanliness exist from the mouth of God.

Correct.

But hand washing was like basically a fence around those cleanliness.

Yes, they couldn't.

They took it, they amplified.

You'll be fine if you wash your hands.

You won't even have to worry about this touching this unclean thing if you're going to be able to do that.

Yeah, even to the point that like if they they had different vessels for different types of washings.

And so Jesus didn't really show much respect for that.

Like he would go, he there's a famous story of Jesus going into someone's home and didn't wash his hands.

Just didn't even do it.

And they're like, how could you know?

And that's the stuff I think that that's the version of religion that we were talking about was this the man-made stuff that maybe is, like you mentioned, connected to a desire to obey and follow the scriptures.

But over time it just becomes this burdensome weight, and and oftentimes it's something that ends up being like a wedge that either drives people away from church unnecessarily, or or it's something that creates all this like angst within ourselves because we feel like we're always performing and trying to the angst and anxiety is a good point to bring up.

I I think about the the Sabbath where Jesus picks some grain with his disciples on the Sabbath to eat or heals on the Sabbath.

And Jesus really clarifies it.

It's like like this was supposed to be a gift for people to rest.

Yeah.

And w which one of you wouldn't like carry your cow out to drink some water on the Sabbath?

Like that's just a thing that happens.

You're allowed to rest.

Don't add all of these things on top of it that turns this rest into into worry and into striving and into all of that.

And so uh And he actually later on ends up connecting that and again we're kind of pulling a lot together here, but he kind of connects that same stuff to yeast and says, beware the yeast of the Pharisees.

And it's this sort of hypocrite, it's like it's hypocrisy, but also a devout devout devotion, that's kind of uh saying the same thing.

It's devotion to the rules just as much as it is devotion to God to the point that you can't even really see the difference.

Um Megan and I used to have a joke, and I'm gonna like Megan worked at a Christian school, okay, and a great Christian school, but you know how it is when you uh when you go to a Christian school, and it was the school, by the way, that we both graduated from.

Right.

So when you go to you can kind of make fun of it because you're they had a very strict dress code, and Christian schools do that.

And one of the things in the dress code at the time, I'm I think it's changed now, was that like the women on staff could not wear pants on chapel days.

Right.

Even if it was like a pant suit, dress pants, slacks, like you know, nice, it had to be a dress.

So the guys had to wear like tucked-in dress pants on uh chapel days.

But and ladies had to wear dresses or long skirts.

No, and so we had this Joe who's like, God hates pants.

That was like our I was like, well, it's because you know the Lord is very passionate about pants and and there's certain types of pants, and he he's okay with these pants.

He had made everyone pants.

And I'm glad you mentioned that.

And so that was kind of all this connects to this desire for us to have a church that is about Jesus, and we're laser focused on Jesus, and we worship him and we love him and we revere him and we honor him.

Uh but can we eliminate as much of the man-made stuff as possible?

Yeah, you said something during your message that I rewrote in my own words because I thought I just could think of it as a good thing.

Say a better way.

Yeah, no, honestly.

Thank you.

No.

No, I'm just I'm jumping.

I was like trying to synthesize some ideas.

I've actually told you the message I gave yesterday.

I'll get into that.

I want to give it again.

I want to give it again.

But you said something about um, you know, God isn't this guy on a mountaintop who's demanding that you follow all the rules to, you know, get one step closer, and every time you break the rules, you're one step away.

Which is like all religion, by the way.

Yeah, right.

It doesn't matter what religion it is.

It that is you going through some type of pray this many times a day, facing this direction, say these chants over and over again, do these things, and then maybe, just maybe, right, the God on the mountaintop will say you'll all right, come on up, yeah, I'll accept you.

But he he comes down and actually initiates that relationship with us first.

And so and And that's how it was in the Garden of Eden, too.

Like he was walking around with us.

Right.

And uh I think you you also said that the law wasn't necessarily um this checklist by which you could earn goodness.

It was to show us our need to be Paul talks about rescued.

Yeah, Paul talks about this idea that the the law well it's a long conversation, right?

Right.

But there's this idea that the ultimate purpose of the law was to to show us our inability to earn it, so to speak.

And it's also like a compare and conversation.

Like it's a mirror of like here, here's all the things that God is, and here's all the things that we aren't, and our need for him to there's a whole there's a whole thing there that's a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, again, there's a lot there.

Um But anyways, I I just kind of put this uh that the rules aren't the means to the relationship.

We're talking about the going up the mountain.

God chooses that relationship first.

And I think to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, the um gratefulness and joy that comes from that relationship, like uh gives us the ability, and the spirit within us gives us the ability to essentially follow those rules, you know, like to honor God in the best way possible.

Not all of the, you know, necessarily the ceremonial rules, um, but allows us to live life in a way that would please him because he's already initiated that relationship.

So it's not to throw all of those things.

I don't want anyone walking.

So let's let's back with the Jesus not religion going back up.

So we've we've talked about a lot of man, like no, it's not wishy-washy.

Yeah.

So you're right.

And actually, this Sunday I'm talking about very a lot of what you're you're talking about.

Okay, so because what what you're ultimately talking about is virtue, is this way of living that is is wholesome and good and lines up with the character of God.

Yeah, right.

Right?

And so that that's different than ceremonial hand washings and what kind of pants you wear, and you know what I mean?

Right.

So there is a distinction too in the like in the law of like this is moral law versus this is Levitical law.

Isn't there?

There's not a distinction made in the actual law itself.

Right.

There's not something like, hey guys, these are the these are the really important ones.

And but e but even clearly, let's go back to like Jesus' day.

Right.

Clearly, the the Pharisees understood that there they're all the laws are not equal.

Right.

Because they asked Jesus, and they often debated this, what what are the most important laws?

Because they had an understanding that I mean, people were around like, hey, not killing someone, probably more important than don't snatch some grain off of something on a Sabbath day, right?

And I I guess maybe what I'm trying to reconcile is the fact that the there are kinds of laws that don't get um transformed by the new covenant.

They're like, don't murder if it does get transformed, it's to a deeper layer, but where Peter gets the vision and is able to take and eat, right, or hang out with Gentiles, you know, be with that.

It's like that's that's a revision of something that God was trying to reveal about the culture of the time.

All right, we gotta back up because this conversation is getting into this territory.

I like this, but it's getting into this territory of like assuming whoever's listening understands a lot of people.

Go listen to Justin's message.

Or just know this.

Yeah.

Jewish people, okay, they're rescued from slavery in Egypt.

Moses is their leader.

Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and he walks down with some tablets.

And those are the Ten Commandments.

And the tap those end up becoming the basis for the law of Moses, but it gets expanded upon.

Right.

And Moses has more conversations with God, and these laws uh get given out.

And essentially the laws have two major functions.

Well, maybe three functions, you could say.

There's priestly laws, they're really specific for like the priests.

They're that's negotiating the relationship between the living God that they're following and the crazy humans that they're humans.

And what's here's what's funny about it, too, or interesting maybe.

I say funny in the wrong context a lot, but what's interesting is God he actually invited all the people up on the mountain to be with him, and it's the people who say to Moses, No, you go on our behalf, we don't want to.

So even that distant intermediate, even the whole concept of an intermediary between the Garden of Eden.

People choose to be together.

Yeah.

Yes.

When we sinned, we hid from God.

He didn't hide from us.

But either way, so all these laws happen, and these laws serve some functions.

The priestly laws are specific to the priests and their functions.

You have like what we would call maybe moral law, which is what I mentioned earlier, virtue, like the right way to treat people and the right way to interact with God.

Don't lie, don't covet.

And Jesus summed up all of that law in saying, Love God, love the Lord with with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

You do those two things, you've got it.

Um but then you have all these ceremonial laws that include um some worship practices, dietary things, uh handling of disease, and and all of those are they're they're spoken of in the in the Bible in spiritual terms, like being unclean, being but they are, for practical purposes, they were sanitary, they kept the people healthy.

Right.

Because the no one back in the day knew about germs, and so things like if you touch there's laws if you touch a carcass, wash your hands, or you're unclean.

They would have seen it as like I'm spiritually unclean.

That's the only thing they really understood.

But there's all these ceremonial laws.

I think God's playing 4D chess, yes, correct.

But I think the the not 4D chess that they would understand in the moment is like this is how the Canaanites act.

Right.

Don't do that.

Don't be like them.

So this is a distinguishing thing of like you're my people, it sets them apart.

Yes, he's he's instilling like a culture that's gonna be.

And I'm I'm glad you said that because he is building a culture, and cultures need laws, can't have culture without laws, and he is creating a culture very much designed to be incredibly unique.

So as they go about and all these other the Canaanites, the Egyptians, all these other the, you know, eventually it's gonna end up being um the Persians and whatnot.

Which is why like circumcision is such a cool thing, because we can look at it now and be like, it doesn't matter.

It's just whatever.

You know, it's ridiculous in some in some ways.

But at the time it would have been a very obvious and very like public.

Yeah, like it would have been weird.

It's now it's it's very normal because of just tradition and years have gone by.

Back then it would have been like Well, not it's not normal because I don't know any no one's unclothed around.

I know my point is it's uh yeah, okay, we don't get all that.

So But the cultures would have known that at the time.

If you were the first person that was ever circumcised, that's my point.

It's like Abrams.

Yeah.

And then from that point on, yeah, like every culture you go into, it's like, excuse me?

But that's I guess my maybe my point, and it had to do with what Peter's vision was, was there are some aspects of the law that get revised.

Yeah, okay, so we'll go back.

So you have all these laws, the Jewish people live as a very separate group of people.

They have more they they and even their moral laws are like a higher level than whatever exists around them, the way they treat people.

And they're always odd.

And so that's why you have even the Romans, when it comes to the time that the Romans conquered, you know, everything, uh, they didn't really conquer the Jews, they were pre-conquered and Romans sort of took over.

But the way like Roman culture worked is you would conquer someone and then you made them Roman.

And Romans were famous for doing a few things.

Uh, they would they would come in, they would modernize your area, they'd build bathhouses, like steam hot baths.

Like that was a thing that if you're a Germanic tribe and you live freezing cold, and then all of a sudden you have a sauna, yeah.

You know, it's like it's pretty nice.

And they would build brothels, they would like they controlled all that because they were like, yeah, we want you to, it was like pleasure and you know, luxury, and they would let you worship your gods because everyone was polytheistic.

You also just have to worship our gods too, and and Caesar and all that.

The Jewish people, the problem with the Jews was that they they don't mix, right?

Like they don't live for the water.

Which is why the taxes thing is so conflicting, because that it's almost like a tribute to a god, right?

So Roman Rome is like, we want you to pay taxes, like, whoa, hold on.

Right.

This, you know, all this stuff.

And so when you get to Jesus' time, you have this group of people who, even though they don't have their own nation or independence, they live totally different, totally set apart, and their laws are why.

But then in the New Testament, you mentioned Peter's vision that we talked about in the message, right?

Like Jesus dies, he he fulfills the purpose of much of the law, especially the sacrificial system of penalty for sin.

But now God has this vision of Peter and he says, Hey, here's all these animals that are unclean.

I want you to eat them.

And Peter's like, What?

And he's gonna eat no bat.

I'm not eating bats.

And he brings in the Gentiles, and the church essentially decides the Gentiles don't have to become Jewish to become Christians.

That's like an unnecessary step.

Right.

Salvation isn't through Salvation's not through the law.

Right.

And the law, and then they start processing, well, well, it it was never through the law.

None of us have actually been saved because of the law.

It's through grace in Jesus, and so the law has no purpose.

So to back to your point, there are certain laws that are we still expected to live according to?

Of course.

But neither you and I are not under the law.

We're not.

Slaves, slaves to we're not we are not slaves to sin as shown by the law.

Yeah.

No.

No, we're not even so cool.

Even the moral law.

Yeah.

Even like the don't steal, don't kill.

Like that stuff is like what what we're actually told in Ezekiel, okay, it's my favorite probably my favorite verse, and I'm I'm actually gonna wear a sweatshirt on Sunday that is that.

My Megan gave it to me because it's probably the core verse that I'm gonna talk about on Sunday.

Is he says, and this is Old Testament, he's talking about this day that he says, I will, I will put a I will take out your stony, stubborn heart, and I will give you a tender, responsive heart.

I will put a new spirit, put my spirit in you, so that you will be able to live out, to obey my regulations.

So the idea is is even in the old testament, there's this recognition, you can't do it.

Like I you're I will have to put a new spirit in you to give you the ability to be empowered to actually live this way.

Right.

So we're no longer under the law, it is not our master, it's not what determines where we stand with God, but we are compelled by the Holy Spirit inside of us to live toward obedience virtuous lives and and lives that honor the Lord.

But now it's not out of fear of stepping outside of the boundaries and getting you know, like like dogs with shot collars, like uh it's like maybe a silly analogy, but all analogies break down.

Like take a dog, um, there's the shock collar approach, which is if you go outside these boundaries, pain, that's the law.

Okay, and it's designed to keep you within the boundaries, but then there's like a dog that is so loyal.

Right.

That they don't go far from their master.

So the same thing is achieved.

They stay inside of the boundaries, but at for totally different reasons and in a totally different motivation.

You know what I mean?

And then someone who's, I think, you know, asking those questions, you know, maybe we've used words like virtue, which are are wishy-washy.

It's it is by the standards set by the Lord, both in scripture and when you we're discussing conviction, there's convictions that come like I have a conviction that I'm not gonna drink soda or whatever.

It's like just like this is healthy for me for this season, and that might not be, you know, a thing.

Um, but then there's convictions from the spirit that's like from the from his word what he's shown himself to desire, and from his relationship with you, what has he shown himself to desire?

Those are the things that you're like accountable to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the Jesus, not religion idea is we want to be, we want to love Jesus, we want to honor Jesus, we want to follow Jesus, and following Jesus and honoring Jesus and loving Jesus is going to mean living like Jesus as much as we can.

The Holy Spirit is actually our only hope to be empowered to that.

Because the law, that's the what Jesus even exposes with the Pharisees.

You can technically follow the law to a T and have the blackest, darkest heart.

Right.

You can do, you know, you can do all the right things.

Correct.

And you can be selfish and you could use the law.

Satan actually, Paul says, Satan used the law for his purposes.

Like Satan can use your righteousness and your holiness and make you someone who has no love and compassion for anybody else.

So now the law is it served its purpose.

The purpose of the law shows the law shows us that we are sinners.

Because the law itself is good.

Like that is good.

It shows us that we're sinners because no one can claim to have lived it.

I I always joke about the Ten Commandments, and the first person I ever heard use this kind of line of thinking was a pastor named uh Erwin uh McManus in California.

And he talks about how low of a bar the Ten Commandments is.

When you think about it, it actually is really low bar.

Because it isn't say it's not talking about you should give large amounts of money to charity, you should volunteer your time, you should, it's just don't worship other gods.

Don't worship other gods, don't kill each other, don't steal from someone, don't don't go after someone else's wife and have an affair.

But every no person can say, I've kept those.

Right.

Everyone has slid under that low bar.

Like we've all gotten in the mud and crawled under it.

But we're not under the law anymore.

Its purpose ultimately was, I believe, and I believe this is biblical, to show us, hey guys, like you are in need of, you're not capable of this on your own.

Go back to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve choose the wrong fruit.

They want to know right from wrong.

They basically take on this system of we'll we'll tow the line now.

We'll and it never worked.

And all it does is it never worked for the Jewish people.

They weren't it didn't work.

Yeah.

Um Jesus comes, he frees us from that, but now we've been given the Holy Spirit and we're empowered, like it says in Ezekiel, to actually live out the core, we would maybe even say the spirit of the law, loving God, loving others, and living godly holy lives.

Right?

Um that's not something we can do on our own.

Right.

And I think this might be helpful.

Religion, we might say religion will never produce that.

Right.

Religion will will produce obedience in certain ways, but often very as much hypocrisy as obedience.

Right.

Um, it it often produces this cold, like like suck the life out of you, sort of it's technical obedience.

Yeah, it's like that.

Like I'm I'm I'm still within this boundary, but my heart is rebelling against this thing.

Right.

Yeah.

But Jesus and relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit inside of us produces like loyalty and a love for God where it's like, I don't want to do that because I don't want to like Yeah, Jesus has put me in some very uncomfortable situations because there's things that I don't want to do that I have this rule for myself that if if something I can confidently say that the Lord said that I'm not a guy that's like, God show God show me this, God show me that, God told me this, God told me that, you know, it's like probably once a month there's kind of like a you know, a a really clear, like the Lord's working on me with that, better, better listen.

My rule is like I have to listen.

And so if it's about talking with someone that I don't want to talk to, if it's about having that confrontation, if it's that talk, call that person, whatever it is, it's like regardless of what it is, I have to, I have to do it because I don't want to be, it's like if if he's going to the extent of like, okay, really, like this isn't obvious.

I'm gonna like tell you now, like I should probably listen to it.

And because of that, it's like been it's been challenging.

Yeah, but it's always good.

But you're living in response to God and you're yeah, it's relational.

AW Tozer wrote, uh, and I'm only I read this recently.

I'm not like a I'm doing a devotional study of what he wrote.

Just pretend it's down on lock.

It's not.

I'm just saying like this is very recent for me.

But I sometimes you quote, you can give off this impression that you're like some scholar and I'm reading this this morning.

Yeah, recently.

Someone on a podcast said this quote.

But I'm reading through these uh devotionals that he wrote, and uh he's a he's a writer from a while back.

But anyway, he talks about the inner voice, and he said, like, you have to devote yourself to the inner voice.

And he's talking about the Holy Spirit.

And it's this constant conversation with God that produces within us a close relationship with God.

And religion doesn't do that.

Religion is like, here's the list, right?

Do these things, don't do these things, you know, and you okay.

Relationship is like, hey, I want you to go talk to that person, right?

Yeah, I want you.

This isn't good for you.

This isn't healthy for you.

This might be okay for other people.

And relationship is a moving target, too.

So like I had a conversation with a buddy about drinking, and you mentioned drinking with the I I guess my point, or I think it's not drink alcohol.

So it's helpful to have a conversation about we're not Jewish and we're not contending with Jewish temptation to adhere to Jewish law or like you know, work that out.

We believe the Jewish scriptures, but we haven't become Jewish because and the Jewish Bible, you know, edifies us, it builds us up, and it reveals what what God is wanting for us.

Exactly.

But like the religion we're contending with is usually like American cultural Christianity religion, maybe response to Catholic religion.

And so I had a conversation with a buddy about drinking and talk about relationship as a moving moving target.

And he was at my house and we were having a few beers, and just noticed he'd he wasn't having a few beers, so I asked him, I was like, Hey, what's that about?

Like, I'm not gonna pressure him to do that.

I just you're like, drink this beer.

No, no, no.

I'm just like, are you done?

Like, is are you he's like, well, you know, I just took it too far a couple weeks ago, and I never want to take it too far right now.

He's like, so it's not like a thing.

I'm not like never drinking again, but I just for now, I'm like to be obedient, to respond to that, like that mistake, and essentially to repent of it, I'm just holding off for now.

And that's that's the relationship thing, right?

Right.

Um, yeah, and so yes, I think the anytime you talk about freedom from law, anytime you talk about freedom in general, there is this caveat, and Paul addresses it in Galatians of like, well, are people just gonna say now that we just live and do whatever?

And Paul says, no, you don't don't use it as a license for sin.

Right.

Um, and sin still exists.

There are things that are wrong, they are sinful.

Now, Paul says, everything for me is permissible.

Right.

But meaning, like if you want to be technical and say, hey, I because I've been saved by Jesus and forgiven for everything and there's grace and there's mercy, I can go do sin.

And and like his grace covers it.

It's like Is that what he's saying, or is he talking about that that customs aspect of your message?

It it's I I gotta look at the specific context of that statement of Paul's because I think that's in Romans, but it might or it's uh it's not in Galatians where he says that.

Yeah.

I don't believe so anyway.

I'm more more my my point my point though is that if you think technically, are all of your sins covered by grace?

Yes, definitely.

Your accidental sins?

Yeah.

Your intentional sins?

Correct.

So you could if like technically speaking if salvation is the bar, correct?

Then yes.

Right.

So there's that.

Of course, yeah.

And so anytime you talk about freedom, people are gonna go, well, people are just gonna use that as a license to sin, and some do.

Yeah.

James actually talks in really strong language about if you like essentially use I believe this is James.

I should have we're not doing a Bible study recap here, we're just talking off cuff.

But uh where like essentially you're using grace as an excuse.

You're it's like he talks about being an adulterous people, and like it's pretty intense language.

But it take all that to the side.

Like technically, yes, and you and Paul addresses that he's like, don't use as a license to sin, because sin will still destroy your life, and blah, blah, blah.

Don't be filled with wine, rather be filled with the Holy Spirit.

But he says, Don't be filled with wine, that will destroy your life.

Right.

Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

But all this, once you get past the yes, technically we're not saying the idea is that the Holy Spirit and a relationship with Jesus, and following the prompting of the Spirit, knowing that the Holy Spirit is never going to, never going to urge you to do something wrong and sinful, right?

Right, um, is going to produce a very different kind of righteousness in your life.

Yeah.

And coming out of a very religious hyper-religious context, the Holy Spirit might be giving you permission to do things that you instinctively would be like, that's wrong.

Like where with Peter, yeah, where it's like, no, I can't, you know, I can't pursue.

Let's talk about, I don't know, like pursuing a relationship.

I've known young guys where it's like, oh, you know, sometimes they feel a call to celibacy or a call to singleness.

And then sometimes that call to singleness switches when they meet the right person.

Right.

And then it's like, well, it's like, what does the Lord want you to do?

If he's calling you to singleness genuinely, like be obedient to that, and that might be a struggle.

And but if you know, he's putting someone in your life and this is a God-honoring relationship and it's a thing to pursue, it's like you have the freedom to choose and work that out between you and him.

Correct.

And a lot of it I think under is understanding, like I talked about in the message, what is the nature of God?

You know, so we talked about the the garden, there's one tree not to eat from and all these other trees to eat from.

We tend to have the opposite view of God's will, that it's one good thing.

And right.

Some of that I think comes from some of Jesus' language about, you know, there there's there's one gate, right, you know, and he's the gate.

But but that's talking about how you enter into salvation, not life in relationship with God.

But either way, um, the Jesus not religion thing is just ultimately you need Jesus.

So you focus on the not religion part, right?

But it's like you need Jesus.

And I think what we can say is, did Jesus come to create Did the most religious people get along with Jesus in his day?

Right?

No.

It was the most religious people were the ones who opposed him the most.

It was the actual like the struggling people that had the that walked the closest with him.

And he had compassion on those people.

And even if you read the gospels, there's times where Jesus is talking very gently, and there's times where he is just like, Whew.

90% of the time when he's given it to someone, he's talking like in really harsh terms.

He's talking to the Pharisees, he's talking to the religious leaders.

There is a you talked about like whether it's Jewish or or uh you know some other culture or it's American, you know, like the puritanical roots of America, like the staunch.

I I would even say there's a spirit of religion.

I'm not saying that there is a that's okay.

But I'm saying that there is this like religious thing that politics gets religious.

Like politics has become way more religious over the last 10, 20 years, where now it's not just if you're vote one way or the other, it very rarely is it for like practical it's usually out of like allegiance to some There's a religious drift and sports gets religious, all of that comes out of like a sense of superiority and a sense of control from the top class.

Yes, I am greater because I and and Jesus just dismantles all of that.

And so he brings us back to the Garden of Eden, so to speak, and it's this I uh ability to say, I have a relationship with God, and it's not because like Adam and Eve had a relationship with God, and they had never eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Yeah, so their relationship with God was completely independent of even their understanding of right and wrong.

We have that.

We I have a relationship with Jesus, and it's it's not contingent on how well I have done the religion thing, the right and the wrong stuff.

Yeah, it's independent of that.

Now, because I love him, going back to the dumb dog analogy, I should have a loyalty to him that makes me go, well, I don't I know that that's wrong.

I know that that's that's not good.

Like there is good and evil, and our eyes are open to that, and we have responsibility there, but but now I I want to live right ultimately because I love God and I love J and I'm grateful to him, and this doesn't honor him, and so it shouldn't be in my life, right?

You know, and that's very different than Do you think you you brought up hats and you brought up uh you were talking about me uh on the way to work this morning.

You were saying, like, I wish oh no, that's not biggie.

Uh you're saying you wish you had done some of the hat stuff differently.

Yeah, yeah, I do.

And I wish I could do like there's certain messages that I'm it was fine.

Yeah, but uh but I wish I could give it like a second time.

But you were using the hat as an analogy toward that temptation toward religious, you know, uh culture.

Yeah, yeah.

And for for me, like I I've started going to the gym and I go to Planet Fitness.

No knock on Planet Fitness, it's fine.

But all gyms are gonna have it's uh it's a very like outwardly the marketing is like how welcoming they are for everybody.

Yeah.

But it's the most religious environment I've ever been in because there's more rules posted on the wall of everyone.

I've been there.

What kind of clothes you can wear and what kind of weightlifting you can do.

Don't be too good at weightlifting, basically.

Don't they have an alarm that I've never seen it used.

I haven't either.

But it's like if someone is going like, oh, like trying to hit that, stop that, not here.

Which is kind of weird.

And so um growing up in his hands, it's kind of funny to go to the gym and be like, this is a really religious advice.

You feel like the the oppressive spirit of religion at the gym, but not in your church.

Right.

Yeah, so the the hat okay.

So like the hat thing is well, we had five words on the screen.

And again, I wish I could give this portion of it again.

Five words are right here.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh yeah, ooh.

Interpretations, convictions, and then a new one customs and preferences or opinions or something like that.

And what's funny, I was watching the screen, but I couldn't hear what the message was because I was back there for baptisms.

And I was like, I just wrote that down for Riley.

I was like, I just wrote those down, and there was only four words.

Justin added a word.

I did.

And then he texted me immediately.

He says, I'm gonna be need a bigger napkin because I just like wrote it down and whatever.

That's funny.

Yeah.

So I'm interested in the customs to talk about the customs things.

So that is kind of designed as a framework for how we understand how we actually live this out.

Okay.

Because being free from religion, it being about Jesus, not religion, while while a beautiful idea, uh, what we see in the New Testament is essentially with like Paul's letters, is like, okay, how do we actually do this?

We've got to work this out.

We used to have rules.

Yeah.

Now you're saying we don't, but it can't be a free from religion.

Membership in this community meant this.

Yes.

But now it doesn't.

So what does membership in this community mean?

Well, and now the now the gospel, so think about it this way.

You used to had to you had to convert to Judaism.

Right.

And that meant like take on all these laws, get circumcised, don't eat this, dress this way.

Now you have the gospel in the in the early church period going out to all of these different cultures.

Right.

The Corinthians are very different than you know the people in in like Thessalonica and all that.

They have their own like whatever, and and they're getting saved.

And it's not like now you have to become Jewish.

Here's the it's like, in some ways, yeah, you're Corinthians, and so you you can still be that be Corinthian, but you're now a Christian.

But so don't so leave some of those Corinthian things behind, but some of it, yeah.

And we're all actually called to be like citizens of the kingdom, not of our cultural.

But but the point is it's not about making everyone this very like there's variety, there's more variety than there's ever been before.

Yeah.

Because everyone's not having to come under this very direct, strict code of con whatever.

So the the New Testament is very much working that out.

Like, oh gosh, could the Corinthians, if you read Corinth, the Corinthians, they are like wild and crazy.

Right.

Um, in fact, in ancient culture, there were Corinthians, if they if someone ever showed up in a play and they were a Corinthian, they were always drunk.

That's actually a thing.

Like if a Corinthian was on stage, it was a Corinthians.

So when Paul writes to the Corinthians, he has a very different tone with them than when he writes to other areas where it's like, he's like, what, you know.

Galatians, Paul is coming hard at religion.

And why would you guys go back to that when you have this new thing?

You read Corinthians, you're like, man, Paul, you seem kind of religious.

Well, these people are just out of control.

Right.

And he's like, You guys got to get some structure in your life.

So a little bit of different stuff there.

These four, these five words now are designed to help us with that.

It used to be three.

It was absolutes, interpretations, and preferences.

And that was what Steve back in the day had.

And so the idea with absolutes are these are things that it's clear in the Bible.

It doesn't matter.

It matters as the Son of God.

Correct.

You've died, it was born a virgin.

It's the the creed stuff.

The creed stuff.

And I think you could also include some moral, okay, um the fruit of the spirit, right?

This is good, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, that stuff.

But then the fruit of the the flesh.

The vegetables of the spirit.

The vegetables of the flesh.

Those that's good.

Well, those like there's never going to be a time.

Sexual immorality when that is violence.

When that's good.

Greed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's clearly a contra a compare-contrast.

So those things are on that list, are always Old Testament, New Testament, wherever you look in Scripture, absolutely clear terms, it's wrong.

Right.

And so we we can know some of those things too.

So and I think with absolutes, it's pretty obvious.

And if you have to write a book explaining how the five times something is mentioned in the Bible, it's always mentioned in the same like negative light.

But actually, if you think about it this way, if you're doing mental gymnastics to come on, it's an absolute.

And we shouldn't make the absolutes.

And absolutes are something that all Christians would agree on.

Should.

But in our culture today, I don't know if you if you would.

I think absolutes.

Right.

Like, you know.

They should.

Right.

But we actually do live, we live in a very self-focused culture that most people the only absolute they truly believe in is their own perspective.

So the enemy uses works against all these.

Yeah.

Okay.

But absolutely.

I'll say both of them.

Okay.

Our definition of absolute should be things that the Bible is extremely clear on.

And I would say that we'll talk about it later.

Interpretations.

These are things in the Bible that there is some wiggle room on.

Like they're biblical.

And you could actually technically put hats in this category.

But they're things the Bible speaks about, but it's not as clear as other things.

And it's clearly not intended to be.

You mentioned the early churches figuring out figuring that out.

I think the churches also today is still figuring that out.

I think it happens online in forms of YouTube videos and responses to YouTube videos instead of letters.

Yeah.

So it's a little bit different.

But yeah, there's still a there's still a cultural discussion about some elements of what a Christian should do that aren't necessarily in that realm of absolute, but it does fall into that interpretation.

And some of those interpretations can be very biblical ideas like uh or or debates like predestination to free will.

Yeah.

That's an interpretation thing.

And some of it can be stuff that actually, from my perspective, it seems like the Bible will speak about it in very absolute terms.

Yeah.

But if you look elsewhere, like women preaching.

Yeah, I was gonna say women preaching, yoga pants was a big thing for a while in the church discussion discourse.

I wasn't part of the year.

It was like 2014 to 2016 era.

I just I'm not sure.

I think tattoos are another like tattoos.

Yeah, you have a tattoo.

You've got a tattoo.

I don't.

Yeah.

That's definitely like an interpretive move.

Yeah, because you you can look at a scripture that says don't get a tattoo.

Yes.

But then the context of well, what was a tattoo right that day?

And again, the verse right before and right after it is don't cut your sideburns and don't wear clothing with mixed materials.

And so you go, okay, interpretation.

Yeah.

And so I think hats is in the same category.

Yeah.

Uh it could be.

Okay.

Because scripture speaks to it.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Scripture speaks to it.

So we have to do our best to interpret it, but it's not an absolute because it's not one of those things that's ubiquitous and every you know.

So I think the thing about the interpretations and absolutes is that there is biblical direct address that lands on both of those.

100%.

So I always draw like a dotted line in my mind for the next one.

For the next set.

Three, yeah.

Well, yeah, and it used to be two, so now I added to it.

Yeah.

So yeah.

And this again, framework for helping understand it.

Interpretations do your best.

Yeah.

But but understand that other people are going to have a slightly and you have to have room for that.

You can be very passionate that your interpretation is correct, and you one interpretation has to be.

Like you can have the wrong interpretation.

I think some issues.

It doesn't matter.

The the if you land on A or B, y'all can still, you probably won't worship together as churches.

Like, but you're both still Christian and God honoring.

And he his he's using a diverse church that like it's important for this conviction or this interpretation to land a little bit more in the free will land, and this one's a little bit more of the predestination.

And there are people that can have that's an interesting interpretation of that.

Yeah.

And so, but you do have to you have to at least have the humility to recognize that this is my interpretation, and while I might feel it is right, and I got all this proof, it's not an absolute, and I I just can't be make it as big of a deal.

Exactly.

Underneath that, dotted line.

Okay, it'd be cool if Zach adds the dotted line.

Nice.

That'd be fun.

Underneath that, you have uh convictions.

This was the first one that that I added to the list, and I think the list needs to be done because it becomes 10, it's just like, what are we?

We're religious.

Convictions are different than interpretations.

Romans speaks to this about how we we should live by our convictions.

Hats could be this too, right?

Or like if your conscience conscience compels you to live a certain way and you act against that, that is like we feel guilty about that?

That's because you're sinning.

You're saying God is giving you your conscience.

And you're you're actually like sinning against yourself in that regard.

You might be doing so that if that guy had you were drinking a beer, he was not.

Right.

If he had had a beer that night, he would have been doing the exact same thing you were doing.

Exactly.

Right.

But he would have been going against what he felt was a conviction.

Yeah.

So that would be a conviction.

Um and you should live by your convictions.

Convictions can be permanent, I will say, and they can be temporary.

Correct.

Like for a time, I had a pretty strict conviction about true crime podcasts.

I had some you know, violence happen in my family and then has gone through some personal stuff too.

And I was like, man, like the Lord's dark.

Yeah, the Lord just showed me like I'm kind of getting entertainment from the darkest moment of someone's life.

Horror movies.

I had a strong conviction uh not to watch horror movies, and I still don't watch horror movies.

Um but I have there have been actually times where I have like gone against that slightly.

Like, oh, it's it's a it's a spooky show, but it's not a horror.

And then I'm like, this is this is not for me, it's wrong.

And I I will say, like, I would have a pretty serious conversation with them, like, guys, like horror movies.

There's better things to do with, you know.

But I'm a horror movie guy, so with convictions within that screen.

So yeah, there's probably degrees of that.

But again, that's a conviction.

And so with convictions, you live by them, but you don't force them on other people.

Definitely.

And when you force your convictions on other people, that I mean, that's like a religious yeah.

I've got to even be careful too, just being in a position of leadership, discussing my convictions, being clear about how I arrived to them and what it means for me is really important because people look up to me and will naturally adopt my convictions because they see me as someone worth following.

Yeah.

And so I've got to always be really careful that I'm not um tempting someone into sin because I have a different conviction, or forcing my convictions on someone else.

And pastors, I think, should be careful because it's very easy sometimes for certain pastors, especially if they get a following, yeah, to have a vehicle to just push their convictions on the code.

Yeah, that's where a conviction becomes a hobby horse.

And yes, then that's religion.

Yeah.

So there's that.

Underneath that, I added one, and it's customs.

Yep.

And I love it.

Are you glad that it's I love it?

Okay.

Because I've always had that like thought of like uh, you know, dress code is a thing.

We have we had a friend who is a missionary, Tessa.

You remember Tessa?

Yeah, yeah.

And she'd go to different countries and do different things.

And just like the things that don't even register on the radar in other cultures would be for us extremely, extremely shocking.

Oh, in Africa, like they may not wear shirts.

The women may not wear shirts.

And that would be like, whoa, to work.

You can't have you've got to have put a shirt on.

Yes.

But it's a custom.

It's a that's a custom.

And for their culture, it isn't wrong.

And you've got to negotiate that, especially if you're going to be a missionary there, what that means for you as like someone coming from another culture.

My gr uh great my wife's grandfather, and so my uh I love he, he's awesome.

Yeah.

You've you've met him, you know him.

He was a missionary in Bolivia for a long time.

And one of the tribes that he visited, they had a custom, they had a special wine.

And this wine was created by women in the tribe who would chew grapes and spit the juice out, and then that juice would ferment.

And the custom, but it was viewed as a very like special wine.

Yeah.

And if you had a guest of honor, you would give them the wine.

So he was given the wine, the spit wine.

Yeah.

And you know, he he refuses it, he is offending their custom, right?

Which is hurtful, right?

Right.

So he went along with it.

Yeah.

And he's like, Lord, Lord, help me save you.

And he did.

Um, so yeah, and we'll talk about customs.

And then the bottom one is preferences.

And you actually said something on the phone this morning that I appreciate.

Like I might be a little too flippant.

Yeah, I said I actually said you're too mean.

Mean.

Yeah.

Because with the preferences, I usually say, hey guys, get over it.

Right.

And preferences do matter to us deeply.

Yeah.

And I I should give a little bit more and I think, you know, thank you for the correction.

Well, I think it was, I mean, you said how what did you think?

And I shared with.

I know.

Yeah.

Um, I think it's because we do have that temptation, you mentioned this in the message as well, to elevate those things.

And so some things that, you know, as a pastor, you might see as a preference.

People haven't experienced that as a preference or even clocked it as a preference.

So like it can feel a little bit.

You might go to a church where there's uh traditional worship in the morning and then modern worship in the after like the later morning for different services.

Essentially, that's a preference that's being And I'm glad you use music because that's one of the classic ones.

It's an easy one, yeah.

Of like style of music, right?

Is the are the lyrics God-honoring and right?

And is the heart behind it to worship the Lord?

And if so, and I think you could say like that was so crazy distracting that no one could actually there's all kinds of things.

But it would feel it would feel more important than just a preference if your church had negotiated a way to even like manage the thing of it.

So I would say a lot of times in those churches, I know a lot of pastors of churches like that, and it's a nightmare.

Yeah, no, because they essentially they you can arrive at get over it or trying to please all and they're almost those guys like, it's hard.

It would be so much better if we could all just agree.

Yeah.

And so uh but yeah, music preference, hymns versus modern, like that's that's preferential.

Yeah.

Because hymns used to be modern.

Liturgical preaching with homilies and smells and bells kind of thing versus uh informal, you know, guy on stage wearing his jeans, telling stories and connecting with the scripture.

That's that's preference.

And that's preference.

It's okay to even choose a church according to those preferences.

That's fine.

Right.

But just recognize that that's what it is.

Don't elevate it to be some holy thing.

All right, so let's go through it real quick.

Um The reason I had a customs, so I talked about hats.

Yeah.

And I would say hats could technically fall.

We're back at hats again, everybody.

They it's just a it's a personal example for me because it I don't want to get into it all.

You told Steve, you said, yup, you got to do jeans.

Yeah.

Now I'm doing hats.

Dude, I said to Steve, I was like, Man, you guys said rock and roll style worship, jeans, untucked t-shirts, you can have a tattoo.

Coffee.

Coffee, you can be drinking coffee in the like, and I'm like, you can also wear hats.

Yeah.

And that's too much.

Like, come on.

Like, there's no way that we can go.

So, you know, in the cult in the context of our culture at his hands, hats are fine.

Yeah.

Because we're a very informal church.

So, but where could hats fall?

Like, it could be an interpretation because there is scripture in Corinthians that talks about head coverings.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, it is an interpretation.

You're interpreting that it's okay against uh scripture that says do not wear Right.

So it says men should not wear head coverings, women should always wear head coverings.

So if you're gonna make that argument, some have actually gone on to say that the the head coverings to make sense of this.

Because what's funny is you'll find churches in America that will be like, you can't wear that hat, but I guarantee you, like that one dude we watched the video of, yeah.

I guarantee you that not every woman in that church is wearing hats.

Right, and he had short hair, which you skipped that verse on Sunday, but it went on the screen.

Yeah, so the long hair is shameful for a man.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, so all the guys have to cut their hair.

Yeah, there's all that stuff.

So that stuff is like you have to deal with it because it's in scripture, it's an interpretation.

Now, at the end of that, where I said this could be multiple things, um, at the end of that, Paul says, anyone who wants to argue with about this, the head coverings talk, he goes, he appeals to a custom.

He says, Is there any other custom by which we know or any of God's churches?

Right.

Meaning at that point in time, culturally, this is like how everyone does things, guys.

And why are you you know, so again, you could go to an African church as a dude, let's not talk about female, if you were in an African church, depending on where you're at, in a tribal setting, maybe, you not wear a shirt and it's fine.

You show up at a any church in America.

I didn't wear a shirt and you didn't wear a shirt, it wouldn't it wouldn't be okay just because it's gonna be blinding.

But right.

But but if you came to an American church and you didn't have a shirt on.

Someone would hand me a shirt, probably.

Yeah, you have to.

And we would say to you, like, well, hold on, they can do it.

Well yeah.

This is the cu this is like you're just not gonna find a church in America where it's okay not to have a shirt on.

Yeah.

Come on, this is what we do.

Right.

We're shirt people.

So point is like Paul appeals to a custom as his like anyone who wants to argue about this, find me another custom.

Just show me one.

Or shut up, basically is what he says.

And so there's customs.

There are customs that are so ingrained in a culture, right?

But what's interesting is those change.

So 50, 60 years ago, a hat indoors was just viewed as in American culture.

You take your hat off when you're a man, when you go inside.

So customs change.

And then it could technically be a conviction too, because there might be someone who says, I just have a conviction about wearing hats.

And I'm like, cool, live by that.

Right.

I I could have explained that better in the message.

And I might actually at the front end of Don't reopen.

Don't keep it going.

Oh, I got you.

If you have a friend that has an issue with that, just send them here.

Hello, welcome to the podcast.

Welcome to the podcast.

Um so we I just use this as an example.

Ultimately, it wasn't about I don't care about I'm not even gonna wear a hat on Sunday.

Right.

The point is it's a silly thing in some ways, but it is a thing, clearly.

Um like Mark Driscoll is a pastor, like he's a pretty hardcore guy.

He wears hats when he preaches, but he always takes it off when he prays.

Right.

Right?

There's like all this stuff.

I think too, I think.

But I was just I was just real quick, I was just using it as a focal point to say, hey, this religion thing, the fact that we even have to wrestle through all this, it shows us that the freedom thing is kind of hard to live out.

So let's at least get our terms correct and understand so that we can all so if I could I could be in church on a Sunday and I could see you wearing a hat and be like You wouldn't even think about it.

Wouldn't even think about it.

And someone else, you know, there's a guy named Willie here and his wife, I think Gloria is her name, they wear suits.

Like they she dresses in a dress.

What I was gonna say about suits is I think that the the customs thing is pretty contextual.

So very much.

It's you said they're not a you know church in America that XYZ wouldn't let a shirt in.

Maybe I don't know maybe there's a beach shirt.

Maybe there's a beach church.

There might be a beach church somewhere.

Yeah, like doing you know, beach ministry.

I don't know.

Um Surf church, it's like Surf Church.

Yeah, that's great.

But I think too, if I were to go to a Catholic church or if I were to go to um a little bit more of a formal church where the culture of that church is a formal dress to honor the Lord.

I would do that.

It's like submitting myself to that for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of what God's doing in that church is totally appropriate.

Because I'm not gonna just to just to ruffle feathers, I'm gonna be me.

That's that's like selfish.

I mentioned this in the my selfish self-expression.

Like this is who I am, deal with it.

Yeah, that's not how we're supposed to.

And that's where tattoos, I think, comes back into it, where there are contexts where tattoos can be inappropriate.

Like I've got a buddy who's uh a missionary in like uh Muslim countries, and tattoos are very like interesting, you know.

It's like it's contentious, right?

To say the least.

And so if you were there, you'd wear a long sleeve shirt and cover your tattoo.

Yeah, it's like uh it's a different um different context.

Then they might ask, you know, about different things or whatever, but they understand.

But point being, um that stuff is contextual.

Correct.

And for our context, what you've been navigating with the hat is like I've never you've never really worn hats much.

No, until I have my team, my team members and the student team, like one of their options to be like, this is me as a student team member is a hat.

Is a hat, it's like an identifier.

I was never a hat guy until my like funny haha hair.

Yeah.

And then started to lose my hair, and I was like, ah, maybe I'll wear hats.

And then I actually found that I really enjoy it.

Yeah, yeah.

And it happened pretty fast.

I was like, I love this.

This is nice.

And I remember the first morning I got up and I was like, wait a minute.

I don't have to fix my hair.

I just put a hat on.

There you go.

I've been missing out on this forever.

Um, no, so again, hats don't matter.

Who cares?

Um it's just an example of how that religion thing.

So here we are as a church, finish it up and go full circle.

We used to have a sign on our building that said, Jesus not religion.

And then yet, there's still this stuff that shows up.

And as a pastor, even though I I in some ways maybe it's silly to have a whole message about freedom.

Like a third of the message.

Yeah, yeah.

But have a whole message about this concept of freedom.

Well, people, I mean, they're living their lives, they've got all kinds of stuff going on.

Like this isn't that practical in terms of how you live your day-to-day life at work or whatever, but you know what?

In far as our context as believers goes, a little bit of yeast, right?

A little bit of religion, it spreads.

And I have seen it happen, and I have seen freed up Jesus followers adopt religion again.

Yeah.

And it messes them up.

I mean, we had a guy, I don't go into names or anything, we had a guy years ago, um, and you know him if I told you, he doesn't go here anymore, and it's not negative, it's not like a bitter thing.

Justin Bieber.

It was Justin Bieber.

Um, no.

But he uh he got really upset about our announcement videos.

Yeah.

Because our announcement videos tend to have a little bit of like goofiness to them.

Yeah, and we also were figuring it out.

So the goofy may have been more goofy back then.

Because we were trying to hard but not to be like, we're figuring it out.

Yeah.

And his hands, one of our cultural values is we take God seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously.

Yeah, having seriously.

So we have fun, party on Sunday.

And that's the church he came to.

Right.

And like that, this is where he met the Lord and where he gave his life and got baptized and all this.

But then all he comes up to me really angry, and he's like, These, I had to walk out of the room during the announcement video.

And I was like, why?

The humor is probably cringy.

I understand that.

No, no, no, that wasn't his point.

No, but here's what he said He said, if we're going to be a church, he was very intense with me.

Not like yelling, but like stern.

If we're going to be a church that attracts spiritually mature people, that video is gonna turn those people off.

Right.

And another way of saying that is if we're gonna be a church that caters to hyper-religious people who are easily offended.

Right.

That's what he meant by spiritually mature.

Yeah.

Because what's funny is a spiritually mature person would look at that and be like, who cares?

Oh, it's a sonic.

That's spiritual mature.

I think it was Sonic.

There was like a largely featured sonic hegemonic.

I don't remember.

But no, a spiritually mature person would be like they'll figure it out.

I'll be patient.

Yeah, it annoys me.

And that's okay to be annoyed even as a spiritually matured person.

But that's what he was actually saying was and I and I looked at him and said, I we've never said we're trying to attract spiritually mature people.

Right.

We're I we're trying to.

I was like, the the point of the announcement videos is to and and what's funny is we be okay.

So this guy, I actually respected this man a lot.

So I paused.

We didn't do an announcement video the next week.

I said, Well, hey, I'm hearing what you're saying.

My gut is I don't agree, but I don't this isn't such a big deal that I'm like so I said, you know what, we won't even do one next week.

And I just did the announcements before the message, and I prayed about it, thought about it.

And then I think the one takeaway was, you know, the announcements are before worship, and we probably should like segue into worship.

Maybe there needs to be sort of there can be some goofiness, right, but then it needs to like land.

So that we're going into to worship.

And that was meaningful, but that wasn't his intention.

The point being, uh he got religious and uh and it messed up his ability to enjoy uh just being at church and laughing to the point where he's like, that's not why we're here.

And he all of a sudden was like every shirt's tucked in and buttoned up, and just he adopted this really religious persona.

And I was like, dude, the the church you're asking us to be right now is not a church you would have resonated with when you first came to Jesus at all.

Like you would have come.

So it ended up being actually like a he he had to go.

Yeah, and it we it didn't happen in a negative way to the city.

No, no, no, and he didn't he just couldn't it couldn't work, yeah.

It couldn't work, and I and I and it and I would say uh he might look at us and say, whatever, but I would say, dude, you you had freedom and you took on religion, and it really just it robbed you of joy and the ability to not take yourself too seriously.

And that actually is a really sad way to live.

So maybe I should have told that story on Sunday.

Would have made the message better.

Don't uh I just want to read you of that message so just do it this week.

Just do the whole thing again.

Hey guys, last week I felt like wasn't as strong as it could be.

So I'm gonna use the same scriptures, similar examples, but say it a slightly two different slight tweaks, and I think you'll agree when we're all done.

No, that's good.

Actually, one of the nice things about church is that it's every week, and every week does not have to be a grandstand.

Yeah, it's like run.

It's really important, but also not important.

Well, because we're gonna be here next Sunday.

Yeah, that'll be okay.

Yeah, it's all good.

Unless there's snow.

Goodbye, everybody.

And that's it.

Jesus not religion.

Yeah.

Bye.